ArcaMax

WASHINGTON -- First came the murder of the Kennedy Rose Garden. That was just a prelude for the killer in the Oval Office.

His next victim is likely the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the arts heartbeat of the capital and the nation. Symphony, opera, theater and ballet lovers are aghast since President Donald J. Trump shut the building in July, stripped the art and declared it would go bankrupt if his name wasn't on the wall.

When the center opened 55 years ago this month with grand fanfare, Leonard Bernstein composed and premiered a "Mass" for the evening. I heard it performed recently, and I'd say it's "wildly inventive," were I a music critic.

On a Sunday walk, I ambled along what was once the Reflecting Pool. Now it's a mangled mess behind a chain-link fence. As you know, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached his "I Have a Dream" sermon right there before 250,000 people gathered by the Lincoln Memorial steps.

That historic March on Washington in 1963 marked a century since Abraham Lincoln signed the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. John F. Kennedy listened to King's dreamy proclamation ("He's damn good") and invited King, John Lewis and other civil rights leaders to the White House after the event.

Those days of grace are gone. Dead space is taking over our public gathering places here in a beloved city the president plainly hates. Yes, he hates many people and places, but we are at ground zero of his vengeance. Shaken and stirred with an insane envy of the JFK and Jackie Kennedy legend and mystique.

(Hiring Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr., the family black sheep and quack, was a way to taunt the Kennedys.)

You don't have to be Nancy Drew to see other murders in plain sight. Take Lafayette Square across from the White House. Known as the town square of Washington, it's boarded up like an armed prison camp. The White House is barely visible, about a football field away.

Tourists, picnickers and protestors made it a destination for more than a century, notably the "Votes for Women" campaigners.

Dissent is something else that makes Trump seethe. Has he read the Bill of Rights? Americans are entitled "peaceably to assemble."

"Apparently, President Trump doesn't want you to see the White House ... (and) the destruction he has done to the East Wing in order to build his huge ballroom," said Gilbert Klein, author of a book on the elegant city square. "He's trying to create his own palace."

The White House press corps treads gingerly on Trump's temper.

As for me, reader, I didn't have the heart to walk to the nearby Arlington Memorial Bridge. The once-handsome bronze horses by the entrance are now a gaudy bright gold that blinds the drivers between Washington and Virginia.

Even less did I care to see the circle by the bridge where Trump brashly plans to build a monumental arch to himself. It has to be taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, he says.

Doesn't he have a war in Iran and an affordability crisis going on?

Resistance to a 250-foot arch, a visual slur that would block the sightlines between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, is rising. People aren't thrilled about the cherry trees Trump cut down for a luxury golf course, either.

Trump's fingerprints are all over this city like it's a crime scene. He never gave up a golf game to attend an orchestra, opera, theater or ballet performance at the Kennedy Center honoring the slain president. Not once.

A famed composer, Philip Glass, canceled the June world premiere of his symphony titled "Lincoln" because of Trump's rampage on the arts.

Perhaps Glass could compose a symphony, "Requiem," for the Kennedy Center.

========

The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

----

Copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate, Inc.